Giving people a voice

Just saw this from Ragan and it shows how enterprise social networking tools can be used to engage all areas of the business and gain valuable insights.

http://www.ragan.com/Main/Articles/How_Yammer_connected_Air_Canadas_employees_47932.aspx

For too long we have focused on so called ‘knowledge workers’ as the major users and contributors of the social networking but, if cultivated correctly it can benefit every level and both management and workers.

There have always been fears about giving people voices in organisations but enterprise social networks have been successfully been deployed in unionised environments with more benefits than detractions.

From my own experiences one factor I believe that helps in this deployment are meetings and processes around ‘contingency planning’, from incidents at airports and in the sky, media breaches and industrial relations. We mapped out processes for each scenario that we highlighted to leadership as appropriate. These eased a number of fears.

Also it was vital to show that this environment benefited everybody, giving workers a voice and also providing insights for leadership. One of the ways of achieving this was the development of advocates in crucial areas of the business, whether they be union activities that could spread the benefits of a tool that gives people and voice and begins to make the whole organisation more transparent and democratic, or leaders within departments that saw how much value they could get by receiving immediate insights into products, processes etc.

This is not achieved through guidelines and corporate missives by but meeting and talking to people (lots of them) and spreading the word. Its people and not technology we engage with so it’s very ‘old school’ in terms of building this network – not just face-to-face but individual conversations via Yammer, email, face-to-face etc.

One of the signals that I believe this was successful was an occurrence when a new member made a post about ‘how much money had the company wasted on this Facebook gimmick’. Before any of the core team could respond a large number of users from all levels of the business came on to defend the platform and giving real life examples of how Yammer helped them as individuals, as teams and as an organisations.

I think once you get people thinking the platform is their voice and not a corporate tool then you can sit back and pat yourself on the back (only for a few minutes though).

Why collaboration fails

Just a quick brain muse here about why collaboration initiatives fail in organisations. Here’s my take on it:

Organisation Context

No collaboration strategy (not technology but business)
No integration with People agenda
Seen as an IT deployment. Technical solution before business requirements gathered
No governance – ‘no one in charge’
No linkage with other systems (intranet)
Little ROI identified for the business
Not replacing existing tools
No business change framework (approached from a psychological / attitudinal perspective rather than technological)

People Context

No guidance on how and what to share in a business context
No training / coaching (for users and management)
Fear
No attention paid to behaviour or culture
No clarity on ‘what goes where’
No change management framework
Left to organic growth
No communities or networks developed
No advocacy programme

Please chip in if you feel I’ve left anything out and we can start to build a comprehensive list.

Changing the business model for advocay programmes

It may be confirming the obvious (although not for many companies who just deploy technology and hope for the best) but advocacy programs have significant impact on engagement rates.

One of the three key findings in the 2014 CR State of Community Management research was that community advocacy and leadership programs are a key element of the most successful communities – they correlate with engagement, ability to measure value and executive participation. These programs require an investment in community management resources and processes to scale from informal programs to structured programs to multi-tiered leadership initiatives.

Only 33% of communities without any leadership opportunities are able to measure value – that rate more than doubles to 71% for those with formal advocacy programs.

The State of Community Management 2014 from The Community Roundtable

One of the key themes (or attitudes as I would like to call it) of a recent business change project team, involved in putting a large world famous brand into the Cloud (Office 365), was to look at changing the normal business model and, in essence, changing the way we worked.

An excellent example of this was the way we recruited the advocates (called Heroes) for the programme who would spread the message, coach their colleagues and be general role models in changing the way people worked through using collaborative tools.

The normal approach would have been to reach out to leadership with a request for nominees. If we were lucky we would get the ‘normal suspects’ who would be involved in every other programme and dutifully attend induction and go through the standard actions. This was not a model for us to follow!

Instead we began to practice what we preached and started to use the power of Yammer. With an agreed set of principles and objectives (but no core job description) we by-passed the traditional middle management (general road blockers with this sort of activity) and reached out to active users on Yammer (going where the energy was) to become advocates. These people were already changing the way they worked by using Yammer and we deliberately avoided the traditional ‘floor walkers’ that IT departments would generally use for the role. It didn’t matter if you were of a management grade or role within a department – we wanted people that had a desire for change rather than a knowledge or technology.

The strategy was to go for numbers. Not dissuade people with a rigid job description or time commitment but giving them a set of principles and objectives and asking them to ‘do what they can, when they can’. The assumption was to have such a large volume of advocates that it didn’t matter if we have gaps in coverage or people away during certain activities – we had the numbers to cover.

We provided a core toolkit and built a coaching programme for them and there were some prescriptive elements around Outlook coaching, but in essence we began using the power of social networking to spread the message and the coaching. Heroes were asked to deal with any permission issues from their management.

Microsoft challenged us to get 350 advocates for the beginning of the roll-out programme. Within 6 weeks we had over 500 and when I left the project we had over 1200 Heroes (from an initial roll-out audience of 48,000).

Some of the initial success stories include:

Over 400 Heroes attended physical and online Yammer coaching sessions in November with the challenge to recruit colleagues and join a group or discussion in Yammer. From the 8 weeks leading up to Christmas over 1000 new people were joining Yammer each week (with engagement levels at over 50%).

Volunteers for use cases, testing, focus groups for SharePoint, OneDrive etc were recruited within minutes rather than days or weeks in normal programmes.

There was some resistance to the ‘social approach’ we took and in some areas we needed to be more prescriptive (interestingly many of these were IT related departments) but the approach got us 90% plus of the advocates we needed.

As the whole campaign was based on behavioural change and new ways of working (not the tools or IT deployment) the intention was not to stand the Heroes down once the roll-out was complete but to use them as a legacy for collaboration (and others projects) within the company.

The disruptive life cycle

Every new disruptive medium or technology goes through a life cycle. Open / social business tools such as Yammer or Jive will be no different. The five phases of this disruptive technology life cycle are:

Phase 1: Eager early adopters. Users eagerly experimented in the newness of the medium. Early adopters attempt to apply the medium to everything.
Phase 2: Ubiquitous usage. Rapid adoption put the medium in the hands of the masses. Adoption exceeds expectation.
Phase 3: Relevant rationalization. Enterprises apply the medium to the right business use cases and processes.
Phase 4: Fatal fatigue. Inundated with communications, bombarded with irrelevant content, and tired of the newness of the medium, employees begin tuning out.
Phase 5: Revival and Rejuvenation. Maturation of the medium ushers an improved era of engagement

Where many of the Yammer type tools stall within organisations is the belief they can avoid some of the fundamentals processes within a business. ‘Just deploy it and let it grow’ or viral / organic adoption (or adaption) to work processes only go so far. Engagement plans are good but you need some basis steps such as:

1 – Review the organisations business strategy

2 – Look how the tool can assist the business strategy and create your own ‘collaboration / KM’ (or whatever you wish to call it) strategy and get it validated by the appropriate body

3 – Develop your content strategy (what goes where) which is clear and understood by the business

4 – Clearly articulate your roadmap for adoption (plan this – don’t just let it ‘happen’ although organic growth will be part of it

5 – Get use cases that support the overall business strategy and work with those groups on how to get best use of the tool

6 – Build the case studies and use them as collateral as you move into areas of the business, in a controlled phased approach to adoption / adaption throughout the business, building champion and advocates as you develop.

7- Develop your KPI / metrics dashboard that ties in with key sponsors / stakeholder initiatives

Employees don’t like their social intranet, study says

http://www.ragan.com/InternalCommunications/Articles/Employees_dont_like_their_social_intranets_study_s_46552.aspx

I think we are now starting to see the issues companies have faced with ‘The rush to social’ or the social silo.

Every new medium or technology goes through a life cycle. Social intranets (however one defines these) will be no different. It’s part of the phases of this disruptive technology life cycle.

I suspect many of the social intranet are at an early stage of the cycle. One of the main issues I have found is to few companies have enough evidence why they should replace some core needs which I suspect the current intranet has not addressed. For many in the workforce, collaboration often means more work, not less work. Connectivity results in more interactions, some less meaningful than others. Increase in effort often shifts the status quo resulting in internal resistance.

There must also be some choice in the user experience.
Time and time, people want to use the tool they are most comfortable with. For example, activity streams make sense for some employees who are used to high frequency, always on, information flows. However, those accustomed to using email as a task list and structured approach to filing information will find discomfort with activity streams.

Companies that were early adopters of social tools have already begun to see signs of duplication of effort and worries over the governance model. Some of the issues being raised are familiar concerns with early intranet developments of the 90s.

The social intranets that receive harsh criticism from many users will look to blame intranet maangers or IT. But if you don’t have sound governance, you are going nowhere fast. The most important element for an effective governance model – nay the intranet as a whole – is the strength and level of engagement of the end owners. People are the primary catalyst of intranet success.

If the governance is in place, then valued, relevant content can’t help but flow from it. It won’t happen overnight, and does require oversight and enforcement, and an effective user experience to support it, but strong content will surge from the right team (and governance model).

A realistic perspective on enterprise activity streams

From ‘Snippets’

The multiple personality of enterprise activity streams

Why do we follow people on activity stream sites like Facebook…cause we like hearing what they are up to…further to this we can converse with them…and even ask questions and share with people.

Most of the time we know what we are in for…we get updates about their life: experiences, they share articles, pictures, etc…

So what about enterprise activity streams?

I don’t quite think we know what we are in for

ie. we are gonna get updates about their daily work that may pollute our streams

Let me explain…

I’m John (Collaboration Lead)

I follow Jason (Project Manager)

I follow Jason as he shares great articles on managing complex projects, and I also follow him to hear about his experiences.

But that’s just one dimension of what Jason posts about…

Jason’s posts are not just sharing and reflective, he also posts about the here and now of his work. He is a member of many online groups where they communicate about their tasks, and all these posts land in my activity stream. He @mentions alot with other people about things that are very detailed to his task at hand…he is, as we say “working out loud”.

Now I know this is what it’s meant to be about ie. ambient awareness (I know what Jason is up to)…but after a while the intricacies of his work don’t interest me, and become noise in my activity stream.

So I want to follow Jason, the guy who shares research and writes reflective posts on experiences…but I don’t want to follow Jason, the guy who does his “to and fro” work in the activity stream.

What do you think?

How do you share yours?

Saw this on tembosocial which again poses the question why people within organisations don’t share.
http://blog.tembosocial.com/blog/bid/275915/Social-Business-Why-Aren-t-People-Sharing?goback=%2Egde_2225440_member_222774240
Sharing is a fundamental mechanism in any kind of enterprise. From the development of the canteen discussions, water cooler moments, information management systems, knowledge management processes and now enterprise social networking platforms, sharing can bring immense value in the form of new innovations, improved decision-making, shorter time to market for new products, faster introduction of new hires, and so forth.
KM and social technologies make sharing of information, expertise and connections across the enterprise and beyond easier than ever before, but whether or not information is shared in a certain environment or situation always comes down to such things as people’s attitudes and behaviors (dare I use the word “culture”) in a group of people.
Despite the influx of KM and social tools into companies it does mean that people will automatically start to share what they know or information they possess with other people who might need it. The introduction of tools and processes are treated like many other IT projects, such as CRM and ERP systems, with fact finding, project management and configuration. But very few projects ever look to understand the psychology of sharing. We also need to understand the context in which we want people to start sharing with each other. When we have that understanding, we should have some idea of what buttons to push to make it happen, such as what technologies to use and how to design, implement and introduce them to the intended users.
One of the often neglected is to train people how to network. This doesn’t involve teaching people to hold regular coffee meetings or hand out business cards but show them the benefits of having a connected life within an organisation and the benefits this can achieve (or the cost if this is not achieved). In essence we are looking at building communities and the principles and benefits really haven’t changed since the Etienne Wenger days. In enterprises there is still little importance or regard paid to the development of communities, both physical and virtual. In communities individuals can build reputation, which is one of the key motivating factors for people to begin sharing.
Peer recognition is another key important factor that encourages sharing within an enterprise. Recognition means the most to us when it comes from those who really know the subject – who know what they’re talking about. It’s great to have your boss think you’re a top performer, but chances are your boss doesn’t know enough about the technical part of your work to know how good you really are – but your peers do.
Relationships are another key element to encourage knowledge sharing. An organisation can foster relationships many ways, but nearly all of them involve people being in conversation with each other. It is through conversation that we learn enough about the other to know the depth of their knowledge, where their strengths lay, what interests they have, and what they are passionate about.
By nature we generally want to share. But in most organisations we are faced with an environment that is not conducive to sharing. I have seen countless policies introduced by companies that appear hell bent on defeating the human tendency to share knowledge. One sure way is to create a situation where in order for one person to succeed the other has to lose. Too many organizations create those conditions with performance management systems that rank order or pit one person against another.
And fundamentally companies ask the wrong question. Rather than look to introducing tools and incentive schemes to share they should be looking at how do they develop relationships, communities, reputations and recognition that will set the wheels in motion for greater knowledge sharing?
PS – it you want to begin developing a knowledge sharing strategy in your organization start with watching ‘Pay it Forward’
http://uk.movies.yahoo.com/movie/pay-it-forward/

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